That having been said, Start9 is far from complete. A lot of the functionality I've described is not yet fully implemented, if at all. That's not to say we haven't made a fair degree of progress, though...

A friend of mine and I have already been working in that direction for a little while now, in the form of a project called Start9. Not only is it an alternative shell, much like what you're proposing, but it's actually modular. This means that any developer can write a piece of shell, be it a Taskbar, Home Screen, File Manager, Application Launcher, or whatever else, and then the user can simply install these modules and arrange some of them in whatever configuration you like. The modules will be able to take advantage of our API to access Windows shell functionality, including undocumented stuff like Jump List info and Live Tiles...and we take care of the Windows Update maintenance. It's basically a build-your-own-shell kit, in more than one sense.

That having been said, Start9 is far from complete. A lot of the functionality I've described is not yet fully implemented, if at all. That's not to say we haven't made a fair degree of progress, though...

Thank you Ivo for providing this program, I will really miss it when it won't work after some future big W10 upgrade! I think I can get used to the new W10 start menu eventually but I don't know how I'll manage without the Classic Explorer part of CS. I really like having the handy customisable Explorer buttons as I hate using the 'Ribbon'! Can anyone suggest a good alternative File Explorer program which I can customise? Thanks.

I've just read the post by Ivo and the one by Gaurav about Win 10. I could almost believe he was talking about Firefox Quantum. Same slimy disregard for the end-user.

I believe the vast majority of Windows users don't use online forums or belong to PC user groups, and just take whatever MS dishes out. Again and again I meet people who have never made a single modification on their system, and just know point-and-click on however the OS came out of the box. (Excluding the folks in my PC User Group.)

"What's wrong with 10, it works fine?""You don't see that MS is tracking you and that this OS will never be secure. It's also full of bloated garbage.""I don't see that. It works fine for me"

I'm in a growing group who is staying with 7, but I don't know where we'll be when the A-V's stop supporting it, or when I can't use it for work any more. Likewise I'm staying with Firefox 52.9esr, for the same reason.

It would absolutely break with a windows 11. though afaik they intend to upgrade windows 10 moving forward rather than focus on new operating system like windows 11. this includes adding new features and such.Several insider versions of windows 10 HAVE already broken classic shell Compatibility; luckily the main version that most consumers are on is currently fine (but that could change any day).

Even the Open-Shell fork is having problems keeping up with Windows 10 upgrades.Below is part of a comment by XenHat on Open-Shell-Menu GitHub Issues thread:

XenHat commented 15 days ago I have noticed these issues before but I put them on Microsoft's side because... Well, it's microsoft and they love to passively-aggressively break things when they're not happy. curious to see it's something caused by OS and relatively reproducible.On a side node; yes, Open-Shell is having issues keeping up with Microsoft's updates. Modern settings are completely inaccessible to us mere mortals without serious Win32 API hacking skills and industry secrets. I honestly expect Open-Shell to be less and less usable as time goes by but we'll try to maintain what still works.

Even the Open-Shell fork is having problems keeping up with Windows 10 upgrades.Below is part of a comment by XenHat on Open-Shell-Menu GitHub Issues thread:

XenHat commented 15 days ago I have noticed these issues before but I put them on Microsoft's side because... Well, it's microsoft and they love to passively-aggressively break things when they're not happy. curious to see it's something caused by OS and relatively reproducible.On a side node; yes, Open-Shell is having issues keeping up with Microsoft's updates. Modern settings are completely inaccessible to us mere mortals without serious Win32 API hacking skills and industry secrets. I honestly expect Open-Shell to be less and less usable as time goes by but we'll try to maintain what still works.

In my opinion (juniper7), Ivo is still the King

Appreciate their efforts and you keeping us apprised of what is going on juniper7. Thanks!

Evidence points to this being a joint-operation with the NSA to remove meddling with the internal workings of your computer, so that all we can do is stare at a flashy interface like 3 year-olds whilst being raped behind the scenes by the "tech-savvy" NSA that is in every other part of your computer.

I recently bought the Microsoft Office 2019 Professional Plus and guess what? yup, only works on Windows 10. Microsoft seems to hate Windows 7 users. This points directly to the NSA, and likely even Microsoft's own ambitions to become another Google.

Every release of Windows 10 works further to secure their stranglehold over us, and force us into submission, and into using an external, top-level interface like we're all in Star Trek or something and all we want to do is walk up to our computer and swipe something or press a large green icon to immediately get whatever we wanted done. So either they think they're aboard the Starship Enterprise, or they simply want to use the rest of the computer for covert spying, monitoring, surveillance, data mining, and information harvesting, and, most probably, for the Bot Net.

Yes, cats out of the bag, the creators of the Bot Net are actually the NSA, and they're streamlining all of our devices, mobile, tablet, Mac & now PC into their Bot Net, itself an integral extension of the Prism world-spying Program, to make every device an extension of their mainframe supercomputers, giving them the most computing power on planet earth, aka the bare minimum to spy on everyone on planet earth.

That's essentially how the new military technology operates as well, interconnecting every plane, boat, ship, tank, vehicle, troop, station and base where central control has full ability to access any of them at anytime, and take over and issue commands and fire weapons as needed, without anything done by the pilot or operators.

They're all about central control of everyone else's devices and tech. That's where all of America's most entitled people end up in their job search.

It probably also explains your hack. Trying to get rid of the hold-outs who aren't on board, because we haven't been beamed aboard, Scotty.

So yes, pay $1000-3000 for your system, by all means, and get access to the top 10% of your system, and allow the NSA to use the rest.

This is also the reason Phones no longer have removable batteries, as turning off your phone doesn't turn it off for the NSA, until your battery completely dies after a month.

Its the exact same power behind Google's own completely Opaque operating system.

They think we'll be pacified with Instagram and Facebook and funny fkn memes and hours of scintillating entertainment, like we're all 13-year old schoolgirls taking selfies and whoring ourselves for likes & followers on social media, and that all the rest of computing will be for their own spying and data harvesting.

They install their own people as CEO's and Upper Management, bit by bit, until eventually they have full operational and strategic control over companies like Microsoft, so they can then make vapid decisions rabidly attacking us, the long-time users, bullying and pushing us, like cattle, into a little fenced-in bullpen, where we fit neatly into their system of spying and utilizing our resources for their ends, turning America into some sort of joke circus, and making us all the clown performers.

>Evidence points to this being a joint-operation with the NSA to remove meddling with the internal workings of your computerWhat evidence? I would believe that they put a back-door in so they can read whatever data they like from anyone online. but I still think any 'dumbification' of the os is to protect it from all the idiots out there. There is a very large group of people that have no idea what deleting system 32 would do to a computer. Also core design principals do suggest that something should be as intuitive as possible. In a world where 3 year-olds are given cellphones and tablets, it would make sense to push something familiar to the main-stream. Options are nice, but they also complicate troubleshooting greatly. and increase the work needed. so it would make sense that the computer elite would be left in the dust when it comes to features/improvements.

>MS Office 2019 only works on windows 10To be expected, they want you to switch to windows 10.. and there are other versions for older OS's that do 99% of the same stuff, so why does it really matter, unless there is no way to get an exchange/refund.

>Every release of windows 10 works to make windows more like star-trekWouldnt it be nice to have everything you need at a push of a button, without having to open a console; search the web for the right commands, and input them.Granted this level of Interface means cutting out everything but the basic's lest it get cluttered. its not a bad design philosophy for the majority. though yes it does leave problems for some.>spying, surveillance,data mining. yes.. Google realized long ago that information is power, and advertising is how they built an empire. They are very much treadding the line of ethics in a way I wish they wouldnt. Its simply where the money is at. and some of that might just be the NSA.>bot-netting and stealing the 90% of your systems resources.I would say it is possible, but to what ends? Microsoft is the one that gets paid to install 'candy crush' on your system without your consent. and the NSA has plenty of raw processing power they wouldn't need a bot-net for, especially when it would take 1 savvy user monitoring the outgoing packets to determine what they are using the system for. and the whole point is secrecy.also the use of 90% of your system resources just doesnt stand up. Your computer produces heat directly proportional to the the processing it does. Its why your fans spin up. If they were using 90% of your cpu at all times, your system would run alot hotter, and have a much larger power draw at idle than it does under load. That said maybe 10% would go-by un-noticed.

>pay $1000-3000 USThose would be extremely high end systems by todays standards, but being from elsewhere I can understand this blunder

>Phones removable batteries, because the NSA wants to spy on youPersonally i think the bigger incentive is the fact that when your battery goes bad, most people just buy a new phone, if it isnt removable.

>Googles completely opaque OS.Which one?Android? Open source. (though I do concede many of the pieces bundled with it are closed)Chrome OS? Also Open source.Either way they are both more open than windows.

ya, actually been a long time since I turned on my computer. Why not just use phones, the internet is mostly just spamming ads and click-bait and trolls anymore.

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>Evidence points to this being a joint-operation with the NSA to remove meddling with the internal workings of your computerWhat evidence? I would believe that they put a back-door in so they can read whatever data they like from anyone online. but I still think any 'dumbification' of the os is to protect it from all the idiots out there. There is a very large group of people that have no idea what deleting system 32 would do to a computer. Also core design principals do suggest that something should be as intuitive as possible. In a world where 3 year-olds are given cellphones and tablets, it would make sense to push something familiar to the main-stream. Options are nice, but they also complicate troubleshooting greatly. and increase the work needed. so it would make sense that the computer elite would be left in the dust when it comes to features/improvements.

How does Windows, rampant with infinite problems, as a hallmark of the system, miraculously become super stable? Did they suddenly find some super genius to fix it? or is it more likely that the NSA, who hires them all, sent one over.

It works because the NSA needs it to work.

The vast majority of Windows problems were not because someone accidentally deleted a system file. Windows was transparent. Nothing you couldn't open up and monitor, in real time, every action easily logged and viewed in real time. Sure, I understand wanting to have a version of windows for 3 year olds and 80 year olds, but my grandma has been using Windows since DOS days, and is better at PCs than anyone I know. Most of us have been on Windows since at least XP or NT 4.0, many of us loyal windows users since way before that. Does it make any sense to abandon all of your users in an attempt to try and be like Apple or Android? If we wanted that, we'd be on apple and android. Everyone knows you give kids apple computers because they're simple. Everyone knows you use Windows if you're semi-interested in Computing or having control of your computing experience. HTC did the same thing, abandoned all of its loyal Windows Mobile users, who made HTC what it was, an industry leader, so they could go try and be like that idiot samsung crap, which was just trying to be an idiot iphone.

About sick of companies trying to be apple crap, and leaving us all face down in the dirt to do it.

Sure, I'd rather not know anything about the command prompt, tbh, or all the crap I've had to learn over the years to save my system, but I also don't want a gigantic android phone or a wannabe apple experience. Make your little Windows 10 version for the imbeciles and people with the attention span of a viral selfie, and develop a power PC experience like Windows 7 for the rest of us.

Don't be Firefox and just take a huge dump on all the developers and everyone who dedicates massive amounts of their time and talent to help the community, just so you can be more like Opera or IE or Chrome, and inject your own stupid opinions on what a user experience should be. Let us each make our own.

We can all have whatever experience we want on Win7 and earlier computers. Ok, Maybe just have a setting that closes off the entire C drive for people not interested in anything, and I'm all for making a Gaming Platform, or a Gaming Setting for people who only want to play games and nothing else, but seriously, are we all to be treated like tweens, all the time?

I just don't buy it. Microsoft is saying "Lets make a platform 12 year olds will REEEEAAALLLLYYY enjoy, and make that our entire company from now on". its unpalatable, and makes no sense.

But what does make massive amounts of sense, is NSA involvement, as it was with Apple even during Jobbs' reign. We know its in other platforms like Facebook, where their CEOs and top people have the clear intention of clandestine operations with users data. With Google we at least know its just for marketing purposes.

And it has been a battle, ongoing, with Windows, for the longest time, beginning with the corruption of Norton AntiVirus to becoming a completely useless teat thats only fooling the dumbest people into feeling like it is doing anything useful. Honestly I feel ESET is the last stand, and that seems to be slowly being given over to the NSA, one function at a time, update by update, and even its not what it used to be.

There is definitely an entire Clandestine OS happening in Windows 10 that couldnt be accomplished with previous versions, and not for lack of trying. I remember getting to the point that I had to physically pull the DSL Cable from my computer in order to stop Secret government Spy Activities happening on my computer in China, and pulling that plug almost every time led to unexpected behaviors in my OS. Simply Disabling the Network Adapter is for your own peace of mind, but has nothing to do with the probably countless virtual adapters being run from your physical hardware way below your OS's capabilities

After the Snowden revelation, any denying the NSA is actively trying to monitor each and every keystroke made by everyone on earth is blind ignorance. There's no more calling people paranoid, its actually a thing, proven. Unequivocally true. period.

now, with that knowledge in mind is the only way any intelligent person or discussion or troubleshooting can proceed.

The most simple and basic answer is usually the correct one. We can extrapolate all day long on the goings on in the minds of some naive guy at Microsoft, giving benefits of all sort of doubts to his or her wholesomeness and poor decisions... or we can go with the most logical and obvious conclusion, which fills in all of the gaps and answers all of the questions. NSA involvement, and a concerted effort to get people away from the inner workings of their computers, so even the things which they could almost get away with in XP, will be lubed up and opened wide for them indefinitely and absolutely, and unquestionably, a complete safe haven, designed with the sole purpose of protecting their top secret exploits.

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>MS Office 2019 only works on windows 10To be expected, they want you to switch to windows 10.. and there are other versions for older OS's that do 99% of the same stuff, so why does it really matter, unless there is no way to get an exchange/refund.

Because I have a Win10 PC running office 2016 and have a Windows7 PC I wanted to install a newly purchased Office 2019 on. The only solution was to uninstall Windows 2016 from the Windows 10 and install it on the windows 7 one, and then install the office 19 on the win10. Incidentally, and here is another bit of evidence, and light to shed, Office16 on my Win10 changed the license automatically to an Office365 subscription service. This was installed with the installer having my CDKEY in the file name. I uninstalled, did a complete MS Scorched Earth, and still, after installing it, as soon as update contacted the server, it switched immediately to an Office365 subscription. I did this 10 or more times, uninstalling and reinstalling, with Microsoft Tech Support, Remote Access to my PC, at least 10 different times, escalated to level 2, which they said was the highest, and several more failed attempts, I finally get escalated to level 3 at microsoft, which anyone who knows either doesnt even knows exists or knows is impossible to reach, they won't even admit it exists. After looking into it further, they simply stopped communication with me and didnt say anything further, unable to fix it. This tells you that there are things in arms of Microsoft that their development team is not even aware of. Terms & conditions of 365 which allow them unadulterated access to all of your files, taken secretly behind the scenes to their own servers. Forcing a hidden secret double-license with 365 then allows them to have access to your stand alone office the same as they would if you were using 365. Most people probably don't even know its happening. You have to actually open up office, look at the settings, find the license, and then click to show multiple levels of licensing. Microsoft manually scorched earth my entire registry, and it still happened. Word Excel Splash screens that appear no longer show the version unless its 365. Looking at your Word program, theres no way to tell if you are using the stand alone version that keeps MS out your biz, or the 365 version that puts everything in their lap.

So nearly impossible to tell, without digging up that license. And then clicking the license once may show your stand alone license, but theres another secret little line below that you have to click again to show the surprise Office 365 license.

That is a tremendous amount of effort, exerted by microsoft, to make sure you are connected to 365, a data-harvesting system, likely for the NSA, since MS doesnt seem to be able to do anything savvy with any information they collect.

And they put no small amount of effort into shutting down things like classic shell. they don;t want you meddling with anything, because then you might notice something, or find something out.

Incidentally, if you use Microsoft OneDrive, you may not be surprised to find out they access and use all of your data whenever & however they want, but you'll probably be surprised that many of your uploaded items from various Microsoft Services are shared publicly, without the ability to change the setting, and you'll have to go unshare them one by one. Another legal loophole to sharing your data with the NSA or whoever else wants it

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>Every release of windows 10 works to make windows more like star-trekWouldnt it be nice to have everything you need at a push of a button, without having to open a console; search the web for the right commands, and input them.Granted this level of Interface means cutting out everything but the basic's lest it get cluttered. its not a bad design philosophy for the majority. though yes it does leave problems for some.

no, it wouldn't. it would mean that they think they know what you want, but they don't, couldn't and never will. Microcrap certainly isnt going to create it. It can't even understand half the sht anyone says, neither can apple or google. I'm happy to have a computerized home that I can talk to and it does things for me, and pops up a holographic display that I can swipe through with my hands, but even then I'll still need control of my documents, securely.

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>spying, surveillance,data mining. yes.. Google realized long ago that information is power, and advertising is how they built an empire. They are very much treading the line of ethics in a way I wish they wouldnt. Its simply where the money is at. and some of that might just be the NSA.>bot-netting and stealing the 90% of your systems resources.I would say it is possible, but to what ends? Microsoft is the one that gets paid to install 'candy crush' on your system without your consent. and the NSA has plenty of raw processing power they wouldn't need a bot-net for, especially when it would take 1 savvy user monitoring the outgoing packets to determine what they are using the system for. and the whole point is secrecy.also the use of 90% of your system resources just doesnt stand up. Your computer produces heat directly proportional to the the processing it does. Its why your fans spin up. If they were using 90% of your cpu at all times, your system would run alot hotter, and have a much larger power draw at idle than it does under load. That said maybe 10% would go-by un-noticed.

not just possible, but actually happening. it was estimated at one point that something like 80% of all computers in the world were technically unwitting zombie computers being used for the bot-net. You don't notice the bot-net, thats its genius. You cant see it in your system resource monitor or running tasks or cpu usage. Its so covert and low level, nobody ever finds it. theres only ever been speculation as to where it came from and who controls it. But given the Snowden Prism revelation, and our general knowledge of the clandestine mega-technical capabilities of the NSA, and their doing similar to these things that really nobody outside the NSA is doing or even can do, it all points plain and simply at the NSA, and that perhaps its doing more than just using resources secretly, and is in fact collecting data.

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>pay $1000-3000 USThose would be extremely high end systems by todays standards, but being from elsewhere I can understand this blunder

That figure was conservative. I spent $5,000 building my first two dual computers in 1995, in America, which is like $10,000 in today's money. You'll easily pay over that amount today, anyone who builds their own systems. With Solid State what it is, Multiple High-end Graphics Cards, the Towers and Cooling systems available today, $1000 is dirt cheap. you can spend $3000 on a single monitor alone. let alone multi-monitor systems. At any rate, Not a single byte or a single binary 1 or 0 entering a single gate, should be anyone else's right to touch on your computer without your express permission and knowledge. Its as if someone came into your home and took something from your dresser drawer when you weren't looking. They should be imprisoned. Its highly criminal.

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>Phones removable batteries, because the NSA wants to spy on youPersonally i think the bigger incentive is the fact that when your battery goes bad, most people just buy a new phone, if it isnt removable.

that's a silly childlike view. it must be nice with your head in the clouds, though. pretty view, fresh air and the like.

No, its because we could all pull our batteries out, and we did, all the time. Only then are you completely off the grid. you are still well connected with your phone powered off. and anyone who's been paying attention to phones through the years can see it isnt even really turning off, just the same way your network adapter gets turned off. you have to physically remove the battery or cable. This was an actual NSA scientist who said this in an interview around the same time I was pulling my cable out of my PC, he came on and said its extremely difficult to get to a system which has been physically disconnected and has an isolated power source and is never even plugged into an Ethernet cable, because if it is, they can still access it. Referring to the Iranian Nuclear program or something, where the only way they were able to compromise the system was to be physically in the building, usb in hand

The Batteries cannot be removed, so they now know where you are 24/7, and have full access to your 3D microphone array, with Snowden himself showed us. If you can't take you're battery out, you are being monitored, followed, tracked and recorded. Who's to say how much of your battery is even left when it says 0%. That will run the NSA services for a month powered off, maybe longer.

Pulling your battery out also solves a great many problems, problems I'm sure most of us have ran into and needed to be able to remove it, since they stopped making them removable.

They can now even send you an alert over your phone you're expected to listen to or read, any time they want. You can't be off the grid. That's by design. Even if you are given the ability to feel like you are.

That's why professionals will still put phones in a Faraday cage in a different room, because they can listen to and track powered off devices.

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>Googles completely opaque OS.Which one?Android? Open source. (though I do concede many of the pieces bundled with it are closed)Chrome OS? Also Open source.Either way they are both more open than windows.

Android, as a random piece of software, is open source. However, that's not what is on your phone. what's on your phone is proprietary and is simply put over the free open-source low-level platform named Android, the same basic platform that TVs and DVD players use

I've just read the post by Ivo and the one by Gaurav about Win 10. I could almost believe he was talking about Firefox Quantum. Same slimy disregard for the end-user.

I believe the vast majority of Windows users don't use online forums or belong to PC user groups, and just take whatever MS dishes out. Again and again I meet people who have never made a single modification on their system, and just know point-and-click on however the OS came out of the box. (Excluding the folks in my PC User Group.)

"What's wrong with 10, it works fine?""You don't see that MS is tracking you and that this OS will never be secure. It's also full of bloated garbage.""I don't see that. It works fine for me"

I'm in a growing group who is staying with 7, but I don't know where we'll be when the A-V's stop supporting it, or when I can't use it for work any more. Likewise I'm staying with Firefox 52.9esr, for the same reason.

Nice, I feel the same way. I wouldn't even use a computer if it wasn' for Windows 7. I'd just get an apple and swipe pretty stuff, draw some pretty pictures maybe or something.

Spot on about Firefox as well, don't even use them anymore, sadly, I'm on chrome, and that is seriously saying something. If Google had bought Firefox with the intention of making everyone switch to chrome, they couldn't have done a better job. The whole thing reaks of the same NSA tripe that brought down Yahoo and other Site services & blogs so everyone would be conveniently on Facebook, the one where you share every piece of your private data, in one easy to monitor spot, which they spared no effort to make it look like it was the normal thing to do and everyone else is paranoid weirdos for not doing it.

I actually ran into the same guy bringing down multiple services, he was throwing him and his colleagues a Wine party just as Yahoo Blogs fell apart. and i ran into the same guy, same MO, same everything, toppling another service, as its hired director and leader. As if his sole responsibility was to get hired, pretend to be helping, and secretly be bringing them down. he seems to have disappeared since I called him out, but he used to make blogs defending his most stupid possible decisions, cheering people, and then, it'd be over. he was like the Grimm Reaper of Services. Had to have been NSA. and I sense the same subversive hand behind Firefox

I'd even be interested in an XP Fork that was community developed and was as compatible as 7 or something like that.

I Keep thinking about Linux, but just hate typing commands all the time.

Linux would have already taken over Microsoft if MS didnt release its grasp on Piracy in China. When MS made everyone in China's screen go black, Linux was developed faster than it ever has been. If MS would have stuck to its guns, the Chinese would have a far superior replacement for Windows, easier to use than Windows even, on Linux.

Just terrible.

We just have to accept that 7 will be less and less supported by Microsoft, who even made its own Office19 incompatible with its own win7. what a-holes. Office19 has zero improvements. I'd say its a step back from 16, tbph. Its only use is to try and get everyone switched to 365 monitoring spyware and force everyone onto the Windows 10 spyware OS. Just call it Windows Prism, and let people opt-in to the NSA spy program

You can thank all these "post teenagers" for coming up with all this artsy-fartsy crap based on the assumption everyone has a toy phone that is surgically implanted into their hand.Whatever happened to KISS.....keep it simple, stupid ?? You would think they would learn their lesson from their 2nd disaster; W8

In some ways, the KISS method still applies. What the user sees is simple. What goes on inside with the networks is the most complex data gathering/harvesting in history.

Surprised more people haven't had a cell phone surgically implanted into the back or palm of their hand,or is that just around the corner with bendy displays? All with an internal electronic generator charging with each breath they take.

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